New York Premiere

Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots gave voice to a little-known and shameful chapter of history before hundreds of African American leaders from business, politics and media at the New York premiere of “Before They Die,” a documentary produced by Reginald Turner, CEO of Mportant Films, and Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. as part of The Tulsa Project, a nonprofit foundation to raise awareness of the event and seek restitution for its survivors.

The Tulsa Race Riots took place in the segregated Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, which was known as the “Black Wall Street” of America. It was founded by O.W. Gurley, the son of two former slaves who moved to Tulsa in July 1906 and bought 40 acres that would be sold exclusively to African Americans. Black Wall Street was a completely black-owned and black-operated community. Its initial business was a rooming house and grocery store built by Gurley in 1906. It housed many migrants fleeing the oppression in Mississippi and those in search of a better life despite the segregation mandates of the Jim Crow era.